


Can't Say No

by florahart



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 12:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't as though Leonard hadn't had a pretty clear sense of how <i>he</i> felt about <i>Jim</i> for a long damn time.  He'd been halfway in love since along about the time the guy dragged him out of the dorm for bar-hopping the third week they'd been at the academy on the grounds he might need a doctor if he got in a fight</p><p>And Leonard didn't have all that many friends and had thought he didn't want any more anyway, but then Jim had wormed his way in and stayed put, and within a few weeks, Leonard had found himself looking forward to the whirlwind of genius and trash (seriously, the kid couldn’t manage to eat a gumdrop, much less a taco, without making a mess) that was a visit from Jim Kirk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Say No

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mm8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mm8/gifts).



> So, you wanted smut and I got stuck in the backstory. I'm working on an 'epilogue' involving instances of smut following, but doubt that will be done by the time of reveals.

Leonard McCoy liked to think of himself as a fairly bright fella--the kind of guy that could size up a situation and come to a conclusion that made sense something right next to a hundred percent of the time.

Which was why, when it occurred to him why the hell one James T-for-Too Much Trouble Kirk kept breaking into his quarters and making himself at home, he felt both a sense of rightful pride about his continued ability to figure shit out, and a sinking feeling of _ho_ shit, might be in over m'head.

Because understanding that the pain in the ass himself held Leonard's company in adequately high regard that he didn't want to risk being told no? a problem which held him back in precisely zero other interpersonal situations? didn't make it one damn bit easier to figure out what to do about it.

It wasn't as though Leonard hadn't had a pretty clear sense of how _he_ felt about _Jim_ for a long damn time. He'd been halfway in love since along about the time the guy dragged him out of the dorm for bar-hopping the third week they'd been at the academy on the grounds he might need a doctor if he got in a fight--which was flimsy and transparent, and obviously Jim was taking pity on him and/or only wanted him for his hypospray, but then it had turned out that both and neither were true; Jim had actually wanted to be his friend, with the convenient side factors of having someone to patch him up if (when) he leapt headlong into any and all available frays, a trait which was turning Leonard gray entirely before his time but which he did have to admit was exciting, and of the fact that Jim actually _liked_ making people feel better, not because he pitied them or felt obligated or any of the other irritating reasons people sometimes had, but because he enjoyed making people smile, plain and simple.

And Leonard didn't have all that many friends and had thought he didn't want any more anyway, but then Jim had wormed his way in and stayed put, and within a few weeks, Leonard had found himself looking forward to the whirlwind of genius and trash (seriously, the kid couldn’t manage to eat a gumdrop, much less a taco, without making a mess) that was a visit from Jim Kirk.

Not that he'd done a damn thing about it other than stay quiet and let it ride, and even when he found himself rolling his eyes and pleading for patience, he'd known since Jim ditched a pair of very blonde, very ...healthy twins to stay up with him all night while he freaked out about his 8am flight test that he had it bad.

And that he really hated flight tests, but in and of itself that was nothing new and he did see the reason in making sure every single person on a shuttle had at least a passing chance at landing it in a crisis, so it wasn't as though he didn't agree he should _do_ it, but somehow that wasn't helping his nerves a whole hell of a lot. 

So Jim stayed with him, reviewed stuff casually all damn night--actually, when Leonard thought back on the hours of conversation, it had sort of startled him to realize how _many_ relevant bits of review Jim had managed to wedge in there--and walked him to the simulator in the morning, then took him for breakfast after, and it had gone surprisingly well, all credit to Jim for grounding him. Well, not grounding, given it was a flight test, but that wasn't the point. Jim had kept his freakout both controlled and out of view of the brass, and Leonard had gone to bed that night knowing it wasn't that he had a crush; it was that he was straight-up, flat-out, full-on in love. But knowing he was in love with his best friend and telling his best friend he was in love, those were two very different things. So yeah, let it ride.

Still, in three years of classwork and medbay shifts, Leonard did let himself come to rely on Jim. Maybe not so much for being present on any given night of the week--hell, four nights out of seven, he was probably (definitely) out finding new and exciting ways to achieve or produce orgasm, and yeah, in a way Leonard was jealous of all the beings Jim fooled around with, but every time Leonard needed him, to help with a literature review or to come up with a paper topic that wouldn't bore Leonard to tears, or to commiserate an anniversary (yeah, commiserate; none of the dates Leonard carried around in his heart were anything to celebrate or remember fondly), why then, Jim was there. So he knew the relationship was _important_ to Jim, just not in the same way it was to him, and after the crushing his heart had taken at Jocelyn's hands, he told himself he was completely, entirely, unremittingly _fine_ with having a best friend he was in love with, and no sex life at all.

And then everything went to hell in an extremely disruptive and distressing handbasket--not that he'd known that yet for sure at the time when he'd found himself dragging Jim along with him because he couldn't stand to leave him, but it'd become clear soon enough and Jesus Christ, he was going to have to get a grip. But not right that minute. He dragged him in and knocked him and out told himself it was just, it was just so he'd know where he was, know he wasn't doing anything stupid while he was suspended and Leonard wasn't there to patch him up, a job he'd found himself actually performing perhaps thirty times (and didn't it say something that thirty times in less than three calendar years meant once every five weeks, give or take, and he found himself thinking that wasn't so bad, was it?). He knew where Jim was, and he'd get a handle on himself later, but first, it turned out they had a planet to save.

Well, and apparently an errant genius-level repeat offender, a title Jim had taken on with pride and repeated with glee all over town, bent on dying of anaphylaxis while Leonard chased four feet behind him. Jesus.

So there for a while, it was all solving the problems of the moment, and then Jim was off the ship safely stowed on an orbiting ice cube (probably this shouldn't have been such a relief, but it was), and then, _then_ the handbasket aspect of this little adventure was confirmed and there was no time to fret about his feelings at all while they worked on all being not-dead for a while. But the minute Jim materialized on the transporter pad, back from Nero's nightmare of a boat, Leonard told his stomach to shut the fuck up, wrapped his arm around Pike's waist, and deliberately, purposefully, painfully ignored Jim, because right then, shit. This was going to be the life Jim led, if he had his own ship. This was going to be how it worked, with hours and days of horrified terror interspersed with instants of flooding relief, until one day, it'd just be the terror.

Which wasn't what Leonard had ever signed up for, but was definitely what he was going to be living with whether he signed on for shipboard duty or something planetside somewhere, only planetside, he was going to be worrying from a distance and never knowing until way too late to try to fix anything.

God damn it, he was going to follow Jim Kirk into space. For as long as Jim wanted to be there.

And he still wasn't going to tell him why.

–

_2256.329_

_"Hey Bones, you got any of that bubble gum toothpaste?"_

_Leonard lifted his head off his pillow and scowled. "I don't know if you know, but my quarters have a door."_

_"Yeah, but I was looking for toothpaste." Jim ducked into the tiny cramped shower-and-toilet arrangements allotted to dormitory singles and rummaged in the single drawer. "Why is everyone such a big fan of mint?"_

_"It's good in juleps? I don't know, what's that got to do with the price of tea in China?" Leonard pushed up onto his elbows and glared at Jim through the open door. "Seriously, are you even familiar with the concept of privacy? It's a good one, so you might ought to see if you can look it up sometime. What if I'd'a been in here with someone?"_

_Jim rolled his eyes. "Were you?"_

_"Not the point."_

_Jim shut the drawer. "So, no bubble gum toothpaste?"_

_"No, because it takes like unicorn shit and also, hey, here's another thing you might look up: we got replicators to make just about anything ya might want to eat, so I 'magine they can make any kind of toothpaste you want."_

_"Like popcorn?"_

_Leonard made a face. "Yuck. But if you wanna brush your teeth with popcorn, who'm I to tell you different? Long as it keeps your teeth healthy. Now get out of here. It's --" he turned his head to look at the chronometer over the desk. "It's four in the morning on a Tuesday, and I don't even want to know why you need bubble gum anything at four a.m."_

_Jim tossed a farce of a salute toward him and headed out. "Oh, also, if you'd been in here with someone," he said as he reached the hall door, "not that you ever are because you're some kind of unusually godless monk, I'd've just looked more quietly. You'd never have known I was here." He grinned. "Better?"_

_"Oh, well that's not creepy at all," Leonard said as the door closed. He sighed and turned over, absently running a thumb along the morning wood that had been happy to see Jim, and tried to decide if going back to sleep was in the cards. Probably not. He ran his thumb along his shaft again. Well, as long as he was up and Jim probably wasn't going to break in again in the next five minutes..._

\--

The minutes seemed to simultaneously stretch and contract as Leonard prepared to work on Pike's spine. The injury was complicated and the chemical and neuro damage worse, but all of it was stuff he felt confident he could fix, if the lights would stay on and maybe they could see about not pitching from side to side every ten or twelve seconds. 

The upside was that the combination of chaos and a complex physiology problem was an excellent distraction from his recent discovery that he was going to be spending the foreseeable future in space.

In _space_. If he wasn't in charge of his own identichip, he'd demand to see his own ID and ask what he'd done with Leonard McCoy.

Annnnd that right there was probably proof he ought to have a chat with psych when--if, but this was Jim, so when--they got home. Jesus.

He hung on as the ship rocked up... what were they doing up there, standing on their tails and dropping home belly-first? He went back to watching the monitors and keeping an eye on the sims of the comparative approaches to the primary neurological problem while he bandaged up burns and sealed sliced-open skin, then while he cleaned up some radiation burns and exposure injuries, and finally while he set up a couple more simulations in case the first ones showed low likelihood of success.

And then, once the ship was moving forward, no real shear or spin, well then, he put his hands and mind to work on Pike. Space was going to have to wait.

\--

_2257.11_

_Leonard thumbed the panel and adjusted the bag on his shoulder as the door opened, then picked up his duffel to go in. Both felt heavy, but he knew that was psychosomatic. He always felt heavy when he got back from trips to see Jo. He set the duffel down and turned toward the bath, then jumped about out of his skin to find Jim leaning back against the wall in his desk chair, two of its feet on the floor and the other two hanging the air. "Good trip?" Jim asked._

_"Yeah, until I died of a heart attack when I got back," Leonard groused. "What the hell, Jim?"_

_"What, I was bored while you were gone. Plus, your bed is better than mine."_

_Leonard turned his head involuntarily at the word 'bed' and blinked at the rumpled sheets. "You busted in here when, exactly?" he asked slowly._

_"Couple days ago." Jim set the chair feet down with a thump. "Hey, you wanna get dinner?"_

_Leonard scowled. "So, I get back from a trip clear across the country--"_

_"It's like a two-hour shuttle trip, Bones. It's not like the old days when it took all day."_

_"Yeah, and you know how much I like a good shuttle trip. I get back here and first you scare the life outta me, and then I learn I gotta change my sheets before I get to sleep, and now you want to drag me out to supper?"_

_"No, the sheets're fine. I didn't do anything you wouldn't have done, swear." Jim held up both hands like he was surrendering and Leonard tried not to think about what he would or wouldn't do while the notion of Jim in his bead was right there in his mind's eye._

_"Fine, I guess anything you've got, I've probably got from you bleedin' all over me anyway," Leonard said. "Still."_

_"Still what? It's not like I asked if you wanted to sign up for flight school. You, me, tacos, couple of beers."_

_Leonard sighed and set his backpack down. He wasn't about to admit he felt lighter already, and he definitely wasn't going to encourage the break-ins, but he was, yes, going to have some cheap tacos and beer. "How'd you get in, anyway? I didn't invite you, ya know," he said as he switched his shuttle-appropriate jacket for something a little heavier; it was chilly out._

_"Yeah, but Bones, you know how this works. If I wait for you to ask, you never will, and if just break in, you can't say no. Plus, it's more fun anyway."_

_"Yeah, kid. Whatever you say." Leonard shoved Jim out the door and followed him to the lift. "I don't know if you know, but rules about breaking and entering aren't exactly suggestions."_

_Jim glanced over his shoulder, grinning. "That's the challenge."_

\--

2258.48

Leonard stopped short of his bed. "Seriously?"

"I don't have quarters, and all the temporary berths are full of people whose rooms blew up or Vulcans whose planet did," Jim said. "It's temporary, but I gotta sleep somewhere."

"Pike's stable, by the way.

"Good, but I knew that. I knew you could fix him."

"Not hardly. He's got a lot of fucking PT to go, and right now the sims suggest 50-50 odds on walking. I barely kept him _alive_."

"Oh, yeah. Total failure you got there." Jim sat up. "Can I just call bullshit right now? You made shit up to deal with the neurotoxins, you held his spinal cord together _with your hands_ when the array had that glitch in the middle of the regen, and you know and I know eight out of ten other surgeons would be fucking _thrilled_ the man is breathing on his own." 

"Pssht."

"Don't you pssht me. I read the report a couple hours ago."

"The _medical_ report? The one restricted to _medical personnel_?"

"I might have abused privilege a little."

"Ya think?"

"Maybe a lot. Anyway, you should sleep."

"Yeah, and you're _in my bed_." 

"Hey, I can share." Jim scooted over and lifted the blanket. 

Leonard blinked at him. "So, I show up in my own goddamn quarters and you _invite me_ into my own bed?" He shook his head. "Jim, you 're ridiculous. Totally, completely ridiculous."

"And you look like hell. Have you even taken a nap in the last, like, four days?"

"Yes."

"Good to know. You still look like shit. Get in here."

Leonard paused. 

"I don't bite. Usually. Unless there's a request. Or, well. Anyway." He scooted closer to the wall. "Plus, I'm an awesome cuddler."

"That what we're doing?" Leonard asked, sitting down and pulling the boot off one foot. He groaned. "Christ, I think I've been standing for a week."

"That's what we're doing." Jim spun Leonard around and yanked off the other boot, then bundled him into the blankets. "Night-night." 

Leonard snuggled down into the pillow. "You're really bad at asking first," he said. 

"No shit," Jim told him, petting his hair. "It's one of my best features."

Leonard pressed back against him. "I think it's just you know I can't say no."

"Yeah you can. Just not right now. You say no to me way more often than I want you to." Jim turned away, covering himself back up and pressing back to back with Leonard. "It's why I never ask, when it's you."

Leonard was pretty sure there was something important about that, but he was too tired to ask, and then he found himself mumbling, "Yeah, cos that's why I'm followin' you inta space." Jim stilled and his top shoulder pressed back against Leonard like he was leaning back to look at him. "Seriously? You're coming with?" It kind of broke Leonard's heart, how surprised and pleased Jim sounded, so he mumbled something that might have been a "yeah, kid, can't get rid 'a me that easy," and then he was out. When he woke up, ten hours later, he turned to ask for clarification on the no statement and to ask if he'd really said he was going into space but Jim was long gone--but there was a sandwich and bottle of water with a smeared note on the table. _I broke in again to feed you, but you were out. -JTK P.S. did you mean it? about not leaving?_

He picked up the note and looked at it for a minute, then sat down to eat the sandwich. Jim never asked, when it was him, because he didn't want him to say no.

Leonard was hungry, so he finished the sandwich and waited to see if a full belly made that make any more sense.

When it didn't, he showered and went to check on Pike. Because his brain needed something to do besides fret about whether his long-standing rule about not telilng Jim had been rendered moot by exhaustion and whether , and also because there was a lot of fucking PT to do, and it was going to start today.

Six hours later, six hours during which he'd considered the fact he'd had Jim literally in his bed and curled up against him, during which he'd found himself wandering off into other ways in which Jim might break in unannounced and get him to do something ridiculous or obscene or both, during which he'd been so distracted that Pike himself had asked if the ship was in fact still in danger and just no one was telling him, he left Medical and stood in the corridor for a good thirty seconds, debating what to do.

He started toward his quarters, then started toward the bridge, then sighed and poked at the panel to ask the ship where her captain was before heading to engineering.

Then he stopped and went back to his quarters first to change his shirt, rolling his eyes at himself all the while.

When the door opened, he glanced over his bare shoulder to find Jim leaning in the doorway. "Scotty said you were looking for me?"

Leonard sighed and pulle dthe shirt over his head. "Kind of."

"Was it to say you'll follow me anywhere?"

"Of _course_ that's what you took away."

"Was it untrue? Or misleading?"

Leonard shook his head. "No, but..." he shrugged. "But I wasn't really going to bring it up."

Jim laughed. "Okay, we can just not talk about it. But Bones, I was going to notice you being on my ship."

Leonard rolled his eyes again. "I'd'a thought of a reason."

"Sure. But isn't it better if you don't have to?" Jim stepped away from the door, letting it close, and plunked down in the chair. "I think it's better. More honest. Less complicated. Plus this way we don't have to lie to your daughter when she comes to visit." 

Leonard stared. "When she--"

"She will, right? Or we can go there? Obviously, since there's no way you stay away from her for too long."

Leonard slowly nodded and grinned. Yeah, he was going to follow Jim into space and bring his daughter here for visits, and he wasn't going to have to make up a story to do it. Yes. ...He was definitely in over his head.


End file.
